


And the Silhouettes You Drew

by inkdust



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes Recovering, Domestic, Excessive Cursing, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, It's these two, M/M, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Steve draws Bucky always and forever, a teaspoon of angst because let's be real, only 80 years late
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-08
Updated: 2017-08-08
Packaged: 2018-12-12 14:57:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11739414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkdust/pseuds/inkdust
Summary: Some of the pieces Bucky’s slowly getting back aren’t really memories. They’re more like...feelings.Complicated, uncertain, potentially embarrassing feelings.And Steve is no help at all.





	And the Silhouettes You Drew

**Author's Note:**

> This started as a response to the “First Kiss” prompt for a 30x31 writing challenge and turned into essentially a conversation in three parts. And kissing.
> 
> It doesn’t quite fit into the [Goddamn Winter Soldier series](http://archiveofourown.org/series/679337), but nothing here contradicts our ideas for that universe, so I consider this one possible way these two may have gotten together there.
> 
> Title from "Gracious" by Ben Howard, which is flawless.

From the moment it starts to nag at him, he knows this is different. It doesn’t feel like the other things he’s working to get back, like remembering to eat or telling Steve his head hurts before it turns into a full-blown screwdriver-to-brain migraine. It’s not like asking for strawberry jam when Steve’s set out grape.

He still spends a lot of his therapy sessions figuring out what belongs where in his head. Filling in the outlines, getting the colors right. He can pick out clues, now, little tells that give away a false implant or a dream. Most of the wrong memories are dreams. The organizations that trained him went for simplification, went for propaganda and nationalism and textbook knowledge of handheld explosives. They didn’t much care where he thought he came from.

Still, one session he spent almost an hour talking about a conversation he had with Dugan outside his tent in 1944 before he suddenly realized it had never happened.

This feels more like that.

He tries to bring it up with Steve once, even though that kind of discussion tends to end with Steve getting weepy and Bucky exiling himself to the fire escape for three hours.

“I know there were things I wasn’t supposed to think,” he says at breakfast, not quite looking at Steve.

Steve’s head jerks up from his oatmeal. That might have been a little abrupt. Bucky’s still bad about that.

“When they had me,” he clarifies. “I know that. But other times…back… I mean, I know it wasn’t…” Bucky exhales roughly. He should be able to use his words by now.

Steve sets his spoon in the bowl, watching him without trying to jump in and rescue. _Look at that, Rogers, you’re learning._

“Were there things…before, when…” Bucky makes the sign for _Brooklyn_ , because sometimes that’s easier, even though they’re technically in Brooklyn again. “Were there things…I wasn’t supposed to think then, either?”

The way Steve’s eyebrows knit together makes it clear he doesn’t understand.

 _I know no one was messing with my brain_ , Bucky signs, fast, irritated when he shouldn’t be. He should be more patient. Steve is doing his best, and Bucky is trying to do his best, and as everyone is so fond of saying, that’s all they can do.

But there’s a feeling there, in some of his patchy memories, with the same sense of misstep he felt with his handlers. The same fear of being caught without even knowing what he was doing wrong. Maybe he just hasn’t remembered what he did wrong back then. Maybe he never will.

More and more keeps coming clear, but no one has ever said he’ll get everything back. The pieces he has should be enough.

“Never mind,” he says.

“Buck—”

To the fire escape it is.

*

“Do you mean guilt?” Steve asks one night a week later, his pencil hovering over his sketchpad. They’re rewatching a Disney movie to help Bucky fall asleep, but Steve is more or less glued to that sketchbook these days. “When you asked about things you weren’t supposed to think. Not supposed to, like out of guilt?”

“I know what guilt is, Rogers,” Bucky grumbles. Which is the worst thing to say, because Steve shuts up like Bucky smacked him. He doesn’t even start drawing again, which is terrible because honestly Bucky is lulled more by the soft scratch of Steve’s pencil.

After two excruciating minutes of silence punctuated by the faint singing animals on the screen, Bucky lets his head fall back against the couch with a sigh. “Yeah, maybe. What thoughts did I have to feel guilty about?”

Bucky has never had any problem trusting Steve’s memory over his own, though it took a while for Steve to get over his hangups about it. But he’s silent now for long enough that Bucky’s tempted to check weepiness levels.

“That bad, huh?” Bucky reaches for the ghost of that carefree smirk. It’s still there, not quite his own anymore but not quite wrong, either.

“I always thought,” Steve says softly, “maybe sometimes you resented supporting both of us.”

Bucky’s head swings around, and he doesn’t have to reach at all for this stare. “Are you serious, Rogers? _Resented_ that? We were in it together, punk. Hell, we were practically—”

Oh. Bucky’s jaw snaps shut around the _M_. That was it.

He wasn’t supposed to think that. And he sure wasn’t supposed to want it.

“Buck?”

Bucky refocuses on Steve’s face, and a whole lot of feelings from the past few months he’s been back slide smoothly into place. _Fuck_. His fist tightens with a soft whir. _Oh, fuck. Yeah, this makes sense._

Those mornings he finds himself watching Steve stir his coffee make sense. The twisting knots in his stomach when Steve steps out of the bathroom in a towel make sense. The fucking awkward erection that popped up during a sparring session last week makes a lot of fucking sense.

God, Steve had been so cheerfully blasé about Bucky’s dick jabbing him in the thigh. “ _Oh—oh, that’s okay, Buck. It happens. Especially with the serum, you know.”_ Face red enough to spontaneously combust and somehow still smiling. Not wanting Bucky to feel embarrassed.

Steve was taking care of him, always, still.

“Buck?” he repeats.

“Practically married,” Bucky says, holding his gaze, just to see what Steve will do. Laugh it off, like he was supposed to back then, or rush to change the subject.

Steve’s eyebrows lift, like he really expected Bucky to finish that sentence differently. _Practically family_ , probably, or whatever the history books say. But he doesn’t laugh. In fact he’s so quiet that Bucky’s heart lurches.

“Tell me I’m not missing something here, pal.”

Steve’s eyes go wide, and he shakes his head as if he’s the one who messed up here. “No, no…we never, um…” He glances down, scratching the back of his neck. “You remember all the girls you used to see?”

“Not really.” Bucky fights the urge to roll his eyes when Steve looks up in concern. “I mean, yeah. But I don’t remember being in love with any of ‘em.”

A smile twitches at the corner of Steve’s mouth, a wry little thing. “No, I don’t think you were.”

Bucky gets a flash of a memory of saying the same thing to him once back then. A different apartment, suspenders hanging off one shoulder. “ _Come on, it ain’t like I’m in love with any of ‘em.”_

Steve had just laughed. _“Pal, you fall in love twice a week.”_

“You told me different then,” Bucky says.

The smile melts away. “I think I know you better now,” Steve says gently. He rises to his feet, gives Bucky’s shoulder a squeeze as he rounds the couch. “I think I was wrong.”

He disappears down the hall, saying something about getting some sleep. Usually that’s a suggestion for both of them, because Bucky sleeps better with Steve in the bed, but tonight he isn’t sure. He picks up Steve’s sketchbook from where he left it, open to an image of the two of them sprawled on the couch. _Real original, Rogers_.

But he drew Bucky-now, not Bucky-then, messy hair and metal arm and the threadbare sweats that once belonged to Steve, and those drawings always make Bucky’s insides twist in a way that should hurt but doesn’t. Maybe he knows why, now. Maybe he doesn’t know anything at all. He settles deeper into the couch, watching the colorful pictures dance across the screen, listening to the sounds of Steve brushing his teeth and washing his face. Sounds of home.

*

“You know me _better_?” Bucky says the next morning, after sitting on the words for so long they almost leap out on their own. “How do you figure that?”

Steve, standing in front of the coffee maker, does a mediocre job of pretending Bucky didn’t just startle him half to death. He pours a cup and hands it to Bucky, leaving a smudge of graphite on the handle. “This.” He gestures between them, around them to the apartment, which Bucky still only leaves for therapy appointments and the Starbucks at the end of the block.

“Close quarters?” Bucky questions. “Not exactly new for us.”

“I know you’re not the same as you were. But learning who you are now means learning more of you than I knew then. And there’s some things I think I see clearer.”

Bucky blinks. Takes a slurping sip of coffee. “That’s profound shit, Rogers.”

“Shut up.” But Steve’s blushing, and Bucky fucking loves it when Steve blushes.

“No, I mean it.” Bucky slurps louder. “Better hope you don’t strain something with all that thinking—you don’t have a lot of practice.”

“Hey!” Steve tries to snatch Bucky’s coffee back, but he yanks it away, lifting it high. “You know I can reach now, jerk.”

It happens fast. Steve’s arm stretches up, and Bucky twists to the side, and the mug hits the floor with a crash that has Bucky’s back against the wall in two seconds flat.

He stares at the shattered pieces, his heart stuttering like a hail of bullets. He slides down the wall, pressing his palms to his temples. “Fuck.”

For a long moment the only sound is his breath heaving in and out.

“Bucky?” Steve murmurs, so softly no one else would have heard it.

He feels Steve’s fingers touch his knee, barely there and then gone again, testing. When he doesn’t react, they return, pressing harder.

“I saw it coming,” he says. His voice is hoarse the way it used to be all the time. “I saw it coming a mile off and I still…” _Still can’t fucking handle a china cup breaking_.

If that doesn’t just sum up his whole goddamn life.

“Hey.” So soft. So soft Bucky feels tears pricking, and he hates that, but at least Steve’s the only one who makes it happen.

“I was feeling real good,” Bucky whispers.

“So was I.” Steve’s hand settles firm on his knee. “And we’ll both feel good again.”

“You always talk like you know that for sure.”

“Yeah. It’s mostly bullshit.”

Bucky snorts a laugh, sad and croaking but good enough. “Knew it.”

Steve turns his hand palm up on Bucky’s knee, open in invitation. Bucky laces their fingers together. Friends don’t do this, he knows.

Friends don’t share a bed, these days. And if they do, they don’t cuddle up, back to front, arms around waists and feet tangled together. Friends don’t wash each other’s hair.

But Bucky had needed Steve to wash his hair. Bucky still needs him there during the night, when he wakes up and doesn’t know if it’s 1939 or 1944 or 1991. (It’s never any of those, but he can’t be too careful.)

He doesn’t need Steve for this. He tightens his fingers around Steve’s. That’s the difference. Here, Bucky wants him.

His other hand brushes Steve’s cheek before he realizes he’s moved, and Steve freezes.

“Okay, Stevie?” Bucky whispers, his knuckles lingering at Steve’s jaw.

“Okay.” It sounds automatic, and Bucky isn’t sure if he should trust it. He’s never touched Steve like this. He’s 97% sure he’s never touched Steve like this. It’s the metal hand, and for a painful instant he feels like he’s wasted it, this touch, because that hand isn’t the same.

But Steve doesn’t move away, doesn’t even flinch. Bucky traces his knuckles up to Steve’s ear. “You need to shave, pal.”

“Do I?” Steve’s breath is short.

Bucky watches the path of his fingers, fascinated. It feels like they’re traveling on their own. “No. I like it.”

He’s not positive Steve’s even breathing now, and something familiar in him clenches tight like a fist. It’s wrong, that feeling. Any question of Steve’s breathing is wrong. He curls his fingers at the nape of Steve’s neck, wishing the hair there was longer, just an inch, an anchor.

“Steve—”

Steve kisses him. Lips to lips, firm and unhesitating and perfect. For barely a breath, and then it’s over, and Steve’s drawing back with his hand over his mouth, his eyes wide.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles against his fingers. “That was—”

Bucky waits, his heart pounding, but Steve doesn’t finish the sentence. “Was what,” Bucky says finally, just as hoarse as before. Barely audible. His heart thuds even louder.

“I didn’t mean to.”

That wasn’t what he asked, but Bucky’s breathing too fast to think. “Felt…pretty intentional, Steve.” Lightheadedness is creeping in, and not _now_ , god damn it. His stupid brain and his stupid body. He tightens his left fist until it actually hurts. He doesn’t have time for his stupid body.

Steve’s hand covers his. “Buck. Come on, ease up for me.” He wedges his fingers between Bucky’s, trying to pry his metal fist open, and that brilliant display of risk-awareness is enough to quiet the roaring in Bucky’s ears.

“Quit it, Rogers,” he huffs, pulling his hand away.

Steve lets go way too fast. “I’m sorry,” he says again, like Bucky’s panic was his fault.

Wasn’t it?

 _No._ “Not anyone’s fault,” Bucky says quietly. “Never is.”

“I mean for…” Steve sucks in a breath and squares his shoulders. “I took advantage. It won’t happen again. I promise.”

Every now and then in a sparring match Bucky will misstep, and Steve will land a hit. This one hurts like the full force of his fist against Bucky’s cheek.

“Took advantage,” Bucky repeats, heat radiating out from the spot, tinging his skin pink. “Like I’m some kind of invalid?”

Steve blinks like Bucky was the one who took a swing. “Bucky, no—”

“Because I remember when I didn’t know my own name, and I remember when you had to tell me to take a bath, and I remember when I was only sleeping every four days, and I’ll tell you this, Rogers—none of those times is now.” Bucky’s throat feels tight. “And maybe I still wake up and check the exit points and I still throw up sometimes for no reason, but you’re the last person who should hold that against me.

“Little Steve Rogers,” he says, almost snarling, mean in a way he never wanted to be. Because he loves that little Steve Rogers in a quiet, secret place in his soul, loves him too fiercely to breathe, and it feels like Bucky just crushed him whole in that metal fist.

But Steve just stares at him, listening for once in his life.

“I remember watching you then.” Bucky’s hand is shaking, the only one that ever shakes anymore. “The way you’d draw me when you thought I wasn’t looking. Thought I didn’t know. God, I just wanted you to draw me all the time.” He glances down, picking at a thread on his sweatpants. Steve’s sweatpants. “Knew I wasn’t supposed to. Wasn’t supposed to think that stuff.”

“ _That’s_ what you meant?”

Bucky looks up, startled. His mouth is too dry, and he knows he hasn’t said this many words at once since he came back. Maybe ever. “What I meant when?”

“You asked about things you weren’t supposed to think. Back before the war.”

Bucky feels his face flush. “I didn’t remember then. I remembered…later. But you still—” He jumps when Steve touches his arm, but this time Steve doesn’t move away.

“I’m sorry,” Steve says, one more damn time.

“For the love of God, quit apologizing.”

“You don’t know what I’m apologizing for.”

“I don’t care. You do it too much. Especially to me.” Bucky puts his hand over Steve’s, twining their fingers again. It feels right this way.

 _It wasn’t your fault_ , he doesn’t say. He isn’t the only one with shit he’s working through.

Steve’s other hand cups his jaw, and Bucky’s eyes fall closed.

“But I still…what?” Steve prompts gently. His thumb follows the line of Bucky’s throat as Bucky swallows.

“Still draw me.”

Bucky wishes he could see Steve’s face, but he can’t bring himself to open his eyes. This could shatter if he does.

Friends don’t do this. They both know that.

“Yeah,” Steve murmurs. “I like drawing you.”

Bucky wets his lips. “That all you’re gonna do?”

His eyes open when Steve’s fingers brush his collarbone, slipping under the edge of his T-shirt. Steve’s gaze follows them, sharp and intent like he’s drawing Bucky right now. “Are you gonna be patient and find out?”

Bucky’s cheeks go warm, and he smirks to cover it. “What, you need a big dramatic moment?”

“You know, some of us have been waiting a long time for this.”

“Some of us have.”

Steve strokes Bucky’s cheek with such bare tenderness that Bucky’s eyes flutter closed again. He marvels at how Steve ever held himself back, how either of them did. How it took them eighty years to get here.

“Jerk,” Steve whispers.

Bucky just leans in, blindly, and Steve’s lips meet his.

 

**Author's Note:**

> l0g0phile is the bestest beta ever even when I forget to say so. The bestest.
> 
> Thanks for reading! Come say hi on [tumblr](https://ink-dust.tumblr.com/).


End file.
